While liberals mock Fox News for reporting the annual school and government-office Christmas bans (the “war on Christmas”), the liberal media never tire of blowing up any tiny story into America’s “War on Muslims.”
The Lowe’s home-improvement chain pulled their ads from the TLC reality show “All-American Muslim.” All three networks piled on Lowe’s for pulling out. Jon Stewart mocked the show’s critics on “The Daily Show,” bizarrely comparing the show as an educational program akin to the science program “Nova” on PBS – a few days after he ranted against the notion of a war on Christmas. “If there has been a war, Christmas is the aggressor nation," he argued.
California state Sen. Ted Lieu, a Democrat, told The Associated Press insisted he’d consider legislative action to force Lowe's to advertise on the program and apologize to Muslims. The AP also reported that Dawud Walid, Michigan director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said his group felt “extreme disappointment” at Lowe's “capitulation to bigotry."
Not every religious “censor” approved of Lowe’s. Bill Donohue of the Catholic League objected. Even though he’s led sponsor campaigns against anti-Catholic advocacy, he suggested it was natural TLC would promote the Muslim families that star on the show.
Put aside the TLC show for a moment. Usually, when a major advertiser decides to not advertise on a program, that doesn’t even make the Hollywood trade papers. Why is this headline news? Lobbyists of all stripes alert corporate sponsors of TV programs to what they’re funding, and that’s not seen as un-American or scandalous. It’s scandalous because the media have a hypersensitivity for anti-Muslim "bigotry" that they do not have for Christians.
They don't object to anti-Christian bigotry. They often participate in it.
TLC announced this show in July, about six months after Katie Couric made waves by insisting the TV community needed to make a “Muslim version of The Cosby Show” to correct all the prejudices we have. This assumes the very worst about Americans, that they think every Muslim is a terrorist and that Muslims don’t shop at Wal-Mart or have babies or play football. It quietly premiered in November and has provoked almost no discussion on all these media outlets until now.
Even in TLC’s defense, Jon Stewart played a clip and pretended it made him fall asleep. It’s all about uplift and building American respect for Islam. In one episode, the plot revolves around the high-school football coach Fouad Zaban being invited to an Iftar dinner for Ramadan with President Obama at the White House. One of the women decides to start wearing the hijab over her hair, which only makes the office mates fascinated. No one would pronounce an ounce of feminist outrage over male chauvinism.
TLC cannot claim this show isn’t meant to promote American Muslims as “just like you” and “as American as apple pie.” It’s right there in the title. Just as TLC couldn’t claim it isn’t trying to make polygamists look “just like you” in “Sister Wives,” or make a Christian family with 19 kids “just like you” in “19 Kids and Counting.” They’re making their money by giving the viewer a “reality” version of how “the other half” lives. The difference is that when the Duggar family announced this fall they would welcome their 20th child (which they later lost to miscarriage), this same “anti-prejudice” media scorned them as clowns.
Obviously TLC is loving and stoking this controversy, since the ratings for “All-American Muslim” are below expectations. One should also suspect the major networks enjoyed the chance to send a message to corporate advertisers that pulling out of one of their edgy programs might turn into a public-relations nightmare.
The notion that Lowe’s just became The Nation’s Most Bigoted Business shows the extreme defensiveness our media and entertainment elites have about criticism or debate about Islam. At the same time, these elites enjoy shows like the December 11 episode of “American Dad” – titled “Season’s Beatings” – shoving Christianity’s face in the dirt and giving Christians an animated beating. The opponents of “bigotry” should look in the mirror.
